To endure your heartbeat
by Howlinchickhowl
Summary: There it is again, she thinks, that intimacy that they share. The feel of his thumb on her wrist and the affectionate look in his eyes, it's keen and hopeful, and slightly too much. But she wants it. She moves into it like she would a patch of sunlight
1. Coming home

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. At all.

Author's note: So, I loved this show. So much. And I can't get these two out of my head. So I think this piece is going to be kind of epic, judging by what I have so far. I hope, if there's anyone else still out there looking for this stuff, that you enjoy it.

* * *

The day that she gets back to Chicago its grey, and raining ever so slightly. A light drizzle that's just _there _enough to be annoying, but not heavy enough to warrant an umbrella. So by the time that she gets to the restaurant her hair is doing that thing where it curls at the ends and sticks to her forehead and she's pissed off because when she left the hotel she looked really quite nice, and now she looks like something akin to a damp rat.

She walks into the restaurant and immediately spots her father. He's standing by the bar talking to a customer and laughing in that charming way that he has that she knows can get anyone to do anything he wants. She's seen him do it, she's been on the receiving end of it several times in her life, but it's still a marvel to watch when it's not directed at her.

She stands there for a few minutes just watching him, and she feels this warmth surging up inside of her, she's missed him. More than she ever thought she would when she agreed to move to Australia. She'd assumed that she'd be ok, that she wouldn't feel the loss of him as it appeared she had, but even with everything that had passed and all the anger that she'd felt for him when she was a teenager, she'd found that that the lack of her father had affected her more than she'd imagined. But then she always had been good at overestimating her own strength.

She's just standing there with this goofy smile on her face when he spots her, and his face lights up just like it used to when she was little.

"Gracious!" He shouts and waves her over, his grin growing as she makes her way over to him. He catches her in a huge hug and throws her around in a circle, and she can't help but giggle because his excitement has always been contagious and she's just missed him _so much_.

When he puts her down he's still grinning, and he's holding her by the shoulders and studying her face and grinning even more.

"Honey, you look so beautiful. And grown up! Where did my Graciousness go?" He looks exasperated and happy and he pulls her into another hug and she chuckles again as he kisses her on the side of her head.

"Dad." She whines half-heartedly, because she feels like she should, but she can't really bring herself to be annoyed at him like she used to when he's obviously just so happy to see her. She wonders briefly why she never understood that when she was fifteen, but then she remembers herself at fifteen and realises that she never really understood anything like she thought she did.

"Alright, alright, I'm sorry." He gives her one last squeeze before he pulls away again. "I just missed you is all. You ready for lunch?"

She smiles and nods in reply and he leaves her there standing at the bar with a promise of returning with his wallet and his coat. She leans back on her elbows and looks around the restaurant. She can see herself all through her childhood running around this place, chasing Zoe. For a while when she was young this place was her castle. It has completely changed since those days, way has been made for the bookstore portion and decor has been updated to keep up with the times, but she can still picture it, smell it as it was when she had made her world out of table legs and shined shoes and dropped napkins. It's almost like home, but more like something else, something she used to understand completely but can't really grasp anymore, knowing what she knows now.

* * *

She feels him before anything else. Before she hears his soft voice to her left, before she turns her head to meet his smiling eyes across the expanse of the mahogany Tiffany had insisted would be gorgeous for the restaurant furniture. Before any of her actual senses catch up with her she can feel his presence. So it's not so much of a shock when she does hear that slow rumble of mirth that comes in the form of his question.

"Reminiscing?"

It's not a shock to her to hear him, she was waiting for it, but she doesn't expect what she sees when she tilts her head around to look at him. She sees a man. Not the guy she knew, not Eli Sammler, rockstar wannabe and general rebel, but a real, honest to goodness man looking at her out of that guy's face. Because on the outside he hasn't really changed, sure he's had a haircut and he's wearing a button-up shirt and leather shoes, but his face is as familiar as ever it was to her, his lean body recognisable in an instant. But there's a light in his eyes now that wasn't there before, the last time she saw him. A light that she thinks she likes as he grins warmly at her and walks around the bar to give her a hug.

It's not as enthusiastic as her father's hug and is much shorter, but there's something strangely intimate in the way he's almost completely bent over and so practically surrounds her with his upper body, and the way his fists curl into her lower back. He's soft and she practically folds right into him and she remembers this so well, this feeling of _something_ between them, pulling them towards each other.

'Of course' she thinks, this is how it always was with him, this feeling of closeness that never really existed but was always just _there_.

He looks sheepish when he pulls away but he doesn't let go of her completely, instead his hands come to stop on her forearms, just resting there, as if he's afraid she'll try to run. He looks right at her, right into her eyes for a minute and his grin just keeps getting bigger, she thinks at one time she would have tried to look anywhere but back at him, and probably tried to move away as well. But she's grown up a lot in the last two years, and part of that apparently, is being able to be near him without feeling like she wants to die, so she just looks straight back at him with a smile of her own, until she starts to think it might look a bit weird, them just standing and staring at each other.

So she looks down at her feet for a moment and that appears to break the spell, because when she looks back up he's taken a half a step back and he's looking her up and down.

"You look really good Grace. All grown up." He adds after a moment with a slight eye roll, as though he can't believe he's saying those words, and she laughs as she tells him,

"You look just the same." He grabs his heart, like she'd shot him straight through it and fakes a stumble backwards, laughing lightly the whole time, and she smiles.

"That's harsh Gracie, real harsh. And to think, I was looking forward to you coming home."

"Don't call me Gracie. And I'm sorry, you do look different, older." He smiles at her again and it feels ridiculous, as if they've both been smiling for this long, it's not natural. "Cleaner." She quips, to try and get a different reaction out of him, but he throws his head back and barks out a laugh, a real laugh and he looks so much like his own father that she thinks maybe she hasn't realised how much he really has changed.

"You're a gas Gracie," he smirks pointedly, raising one eyebrow in her direction and she scowls, but she can't pull it off completely and he laughs softly and grasps one of her arms gently between his thumb and forefingers and rubs lightly along the inside of her wrist. "Sorry," he repents, and shrugs "couldn't resist."

There it is again, she thinks, that _intimacy_ that they share. The feel of his thumb on her wrist and the affectionate look in his eyes, it's keen and hopeful, and slightly too much. But she wants it. She moves into it like she would a patch of sunlight in a darkened room. She doesn't think she could _ever_ have too much of that feeling, no matter how overwhelming it was.

"You here for lunch with your dad?" He asks, his tone light again, but his hand still encircling her wrist, like he's not quite ready to let go. Maybe he isn't. Maybe she's imagining things. She's gotten sick of trying to guess, so she just lets it go and accepts whatever it is. She nods at him again, not quite certain of her voice.

"What are you doing later?" She's thrown, for a moment, because he's there, and still touching her and looking at her, and she can't seem to _remember_ what she's doing later.

"I don't know." She tells him, because it's not a total lie, and it makes it seem like she has options for things to do later that she hasn't quite decided on. And he nods sombrely, so she thinks he probably went for that explanation in his head.

"You should come by my place. We could catch up." Grace laughs, because who would have thought three years ago that Eli Sammler would ever use a phrase like 'catch up'? It throws her, again. He's so different from how he was.

"You have a place?" She asks with a grin, to mask her amusement at his language.

"Of course. Where did you think I was living?"

"Your mom's?" He looks hurt momentarily, and she's almost sorry she said it, but he recovers quickly and is smiling at her again before she can blink.

"Nah, moved out about a year and a half ago. I have a small apartment downtown. It's next door to a bar, but it's a pretty cool area, and it's cheap. You should come see if you're not busy, I'd like you to."

His thumb presses harder into her wrist as he says the last part, and she gets the feeling that her answer now is really important. That he's hanging on it. That they're hanging on it. He's looking at her with so much hope that it's almost desperate and her breath catches in her throat at the sight of him. So she does the only thing she can do. She nods. And then clears her throat before asking for his address. He grins quickly and reaches across the bar for a piece of paper and a pen, scribbling it down quickly and passing it to her.

"Grace! I'm ready." She hears her dad call out from the door and she turns and nods in acknowledgement.

She turns back to Eli one last time and offers an apologetic smile and a wave before heading off. She sees him nod and go back to whatever he was doing before he'd seen her and she feels this _buzz_ of anticipation. She knows, much like every other interaction she's had with him in her lifetime, whatever else tonight is going to be, it's definitely not going to be what she expects.


	2. A view of tomorrow

He hadn't expected her to seem so relaxed. When Jake had told him that Grace was coming home to get settled in before she started college, Eli had prepared himself for any number of changes in her. But he hadn't expected _her_ to have changed so much. And he knows that doesn't make sense, because she's still Grace Manning, he can see it in her. But she has this veneer now, this serenity about her that seems unflappable, and whatever else he had prepared for; he had not been prepared for that.

He had also not been prepared for how much he had missed her. And he finds it ridiculous that it took her coming back for him to realise he had missed her at all, but when he saw her standing there in the restaurant, it suddenly become incredibly important for him to be near her, to touch her, to _feel_ her. It's almost like he missed her more when she was standing half a foot in front of him than when she had been half way around the world.

He didn't really know why he had invited her to his apartment tonight, what he thought he was going to do or say once she got here, but he knew that he needed her to say yes. He was almost desperate for her to say yes, and that once she had he had felt this rush of relief from anxiety that he hadn't even realised he had been feeling. So he was waiting. It was 7.30. She had called about half an hour ago and said she'd be about half an hour, and he'd been waiting ever since.

When the knock finally came it startled him, even though it was the only thing he had been waiting for all evening. He rolled his eyes at his own ridiculousness as he made his way to the front door. Stopping there for a moment he scrubbed his face with his left hand and ran it through his short hair before huffing out a short breath and pulling back the door.

Her smiling face greeted him on the other side and it was like he could feel the tension leaving him. It was insane that she could make him feel like this. Like seriously. Mad to the Max.

"Hey," he greeted her finally and moved to pull her into a one arm hug.

"Hey yourself," she threw back as they moved apart. She didn't miss the way that his hand trailed all the way down the back of her arm, or the way it wound with her own and pulled her into his apartment, or the way he held onto it as he tugged her down the small hallway and into the lounge.

When they got there he spun her round in a circle and somehow ended up behind her with his hands planted on her shoulders. She smiled, because his excitement has always been contagious, and he's clearly really proud of his place. As he directed her around showing her everything of note, he kept his hands on her shoulders and his thumbs sort of moved into her neck. And every time he said something he _really_ wanted her to listen to he'd push into her for emphasis, and it was just like she was sixteen again and he was dragging her around the record store showing her everything he insisting she had to listen to, but not giving her time to process because he had moved on to the next thing. She couldn't help but laugh and beam at him over her shoulder.

The grand tour he was giving her ended up taking about ten minutes, impressive considering his place is like the size of a postage stamp, but he's nervous and he's rambling and he _really _wants her to like it, so he just kept on talking until he felt like he needed water and then remembered that he was supposed to offer her a drink, him being her host and all. He turned to the sink to pour them both some water and she finally had a moment to breath. She leant against his breakfast bar and said to the back of him

"Your place is really great Eli. Honestly."

He turned back to her with a kind of sheepish grin on his face and handed her a glass.

"It's not much, you know, but I kinda like it."

"It's perfect. It's you."

He chuckled a little at that, because it was and it wasn't. It was the him she had known, that he had been, back then, before. And it was him now in that it was a part of him he liked to remind himself of, because he had never really wanted to grow up even though he knew he had to, and this apartment was like his last vestige of the angry youth he had given up. It wasn't really him anymore. But he liked that she still thought of him that way.

"You haven't even seen the best bit." He told her and grabbed her free hand again, dragging her toward the back of the kitchen to a large sash window that he opened one handed and then slipped out through, only his hand remaining to make sure she followed him.

She stepped out onto a precarious looking platform with a rusty railing that led around the side of the building. He was still holding her hand, and he used it to bring her forward in front of him, and then placed it in the small of her back to guide her. Suddenly, and pretty much out of nowhere, she found herself in a garden. She's not even kidding. There were plants in pots everywhere, and honeysuckle and roses growing along the railings and up the walls, and a view of pretty much everything, it was magical.

"Eli." She breathed, barely realising she had done it until she felt his breath at her ear and that shiver run down her back.

"I know." He said, and he sounded almost as in awe as she was.

"You could see the whole city from up here."

"I know. The guy who lived here before me, he was kind of obsessed with it. Left me instructions and everything. It's pretty cool huh?"

She nodded, vigorously. Yeah it was pretty damn cool. And she told him so.

They sat down on what appeared to be a park bench and drank their water in silence for a few minutes. The sun was down and with the city all lit up, the view really was spectacular. But it's chilly out, a reminder of the day's miserable weather, and before long it got too much to be really comfortable. So they moved back inside, and sat on his faded green carpet in front of his space heater with two glasses of wine and a bar of chocolate between them. It was nice. Quiet. _Intimate_.

They've never really been alone together like this, he thinks. Without some kind of scandal to draw them in and keep them talking. He remembers being 18 and being kind of afraid to be alone with her; she was so intense sometimes, and all of her attention would be on him and he'd get this feeling like her focus was setting him on fire and he'd have to leave. He thinks that probably hurt her quite a lot, and he wishes he could go back and just work through it, because sitting here with her now is so sweet and calm and he thinks that maybe if he had bothered to stick around, maybe they could have gotten to this part a lot sooner. But he was kind of a moron, and there's no way they'll ever know now, so he kind of just settles into the idea of having it now, this quiet with her, and he gets to like that idea quite a lot.

They talk for a long time, about Australia and their family and his job and school and her haircut and his long-since broken up band. They talk about Carla and some guy called Brett that Grace pretty much fell for over there. And then when they've talked about everything they can, they stop talking and just sit.

His hand is pretty much always on her, covering her own or patting her leg, or brushing hair from her face. She wonders briefly what that's about, what he's thinking, or if he's thinking, before she stops herself and reminds herself to just go with it. And once she stops thinking about it, it becomes just nice, another facet of their evening, this constant contact, and she thinks it's even helping her stay calm. She wonders if he knows that.

When it gets to two a.m. she knows she should probably go back to her hotel, she has to go and look at housing tomorrow and she's really dreading it, dormitory life is not something that ever appealed to her about college and she can already tell she's just going to hate it. She tells him all this and then tells him she should leave.

"Stay here." He tells her, as though it's the simplest thing in the world. As if it's the normal thing to say to your stepsister that you haven't seen in two years as you clean up after an evening that could easily have been mistaken for a _date_ by an outside source. "Stay here." As if it's that easy. Maybe it is.

"What do you mean?"

He looks at her like she's kind of dumb, and she would laugh if she weren't so invested in his answer, because she knows she used to give him that look all the time when they were young.

"I mean stay here. I've got a spare room, sorta, I mean it's got a lot of crap in it, but I can clear it out, and until then you can stay in my room and I'll crash on the couch. It's rent free, close to school. I'm sure your dad would be happy that you wouldn't be living in a dorm."

He finished putting the glasses away and turned back to look at her. She must look confused, or something because he shrugs, like he doesn't really care that much, like it's just a casual offer.

But then he says it again. And that look in his eyes is anything but casual. His voice is soft and his eyes darker.

"Stay here." He repeats, and she knows he means it. He wants her here.

"Are you sure?"

He nods and shrugs again, trying to reinforce the casualness of it all, the _brotherliness _of this offer he's extending her. And she nods at him, trying not to grin just a little too hard.

And that's how she ends up living with Eli.


	3. Bash it down

Disclaimer: I don't own anything

A/N: Thank you to those of you who have reviewed, it's so nice to know that there's still people out there who still sail this ship. Your comments are much appreciated.

* * *

It turns out to be quite a good arrangement, their living together like this. He works the afternoon – early evening shift at the restaurant most days, so she's able to study every day until about 8 when he comes home. And because he works at her father's restaurant he usually brings dinner with him for free, so they don't really have to cook or buy groceries apart from for breakfast and snacks – she usually skips lunch or eats on campus and he mostly just snacks after the gym on his way to work. She wakes him up in the mornings as she heads out to class, and he carries her to bed when she falls asleep on the couch studying or watching movies.

It's really good, what they have going, it's comfortable and easy, which are two things neither of them would have ever said characterised their relationship before, it works for them. So of course it isn't long before it all starts to go wrong.

He comes home one evening to find her sitting on the breakfast bar drinking coffee and laughing down the phone. He stands in the hall opening for a minute and just watches her. It's Wednesday, so he knows it's probably Lily on the phone, or at least someone from their family 'down under', and he likes to watch her sometimes when she talks to them, to remind himself of how she used to be. Of _Grace_, as she was, as he remembers her, vulnerable and passionate and always just a little annoyed at everything, and her mother especially always brings that girl out of her. Sure she had grown up a lot in Australia, and it's not like she had got on a plane and become a completely different person, but there's something about your relationship with the people who raise you that always remains the same, just different versions of the same. So he likes to watch her when she's like this, because as much as he enjoys living with the Grace he's come to know since August, he finds sometimes he kind of misses the violently opinionated, fearless Grace of his teenage years. She doesn't know any of this of course, their youth is something they don't often discuss, and they try extra hard to stay away from talking about their relationship back then, whatever it was.

She's giggling into the receiver and says something about some beach that is near to their house out there and then laughs a full blown laugh in response to whatever it is that whomever it is on the other end of the phone says to her. And he's just watching her, which sure, could be thought of as kind of creepy, but she just looks so relaxed and he can't help but just _drink _her in.

He realises at some point that he's lost track of what she's saying and was just literally _staring _at her because she's stopped giggling and instead is blushing like a beetroot and ducking her head into her chest like she does when she doesn't want to talk about something because she thinks that if people can't hear her then they'll just give up trying.

"Mom, I just met him, I don't know."

That got his attention, him? Him who? What doesn't she know?

"It's just coffee Mother, we're not getting married or anything."

She was in the process of rolling her eyes and she took her head round with her when her eyes landed on him leaning against the doorframe. She jumped a little bit and gave him a shy wave, which he returned with a practiced Eli Sammler eyebrow raise. She jumped down off the counter and took the phone into her room to finish her conversation. He started sorting out food and tidying up the kitchen, pretending that he wasn't waiting for her to get off the phone so that he could find out what was going on, and at the same time trying to figure out why he had to pretend that he didn't want to find out what was going on. What the hell was his problem? _Jesus._ This was not good. _Shit._

He was finishing up the salad when she finally emerged and replaced the phone on the hook by the fridge. She took plates from the cupboard and started to lay everything out on their breakfast bar while he took the rest of the food out of containers. They moved around each other with practiced ease and sat down to dinner without having spoken.

She smiled across at him as she bit into her lasagne, and he smiled back taking a big munch of lettuce. It didn't all fit in his mouth and she giggled at him when he had to involve his hands. She was still smiling when he finally got himself sorted out and he felt something _tug_ at his stomach. He thinks he likes this a little bit too much.

"So, you uh, you talk to your Mom?" He asks after a few minutes. She nods and smiles around her mouthful of food, chewing slightly faster than she had been so that she can answer him.

"Yeah," She gets out finally, taking a sip of her water, "Zoe's got a boyfriend, and Jessie's joined a band."

The last one makes him choke a little bit, he can barely believe it.

"Seriously?"

"Oh yeah, our little sisters are all growns-up old man." She teases him, eyes full of mirth, she knows he's not exactly glad that he's getting older. Who the hell is?

"That's crazy."

"Hmm-hmm."

Silence falls again for another few minutes and he realises at some point that his right leg is jiggling up and down of its own accord. He remembers hearing once in junior high that that was a sign of sexual frustration. He wonders briefly if it's true. He thinks he's just tired and his muscles have decided to retire his brain.

"So, I heard you talking a little bit, you uh, you got some kind of date?" He asks it quietly, his mouth half-hidden behind his water glass. She blushes. Deep. Well _shit._

"Oh, it's not really a date or anything real like that. This guy in my 20th Century Lit. Class asked me if I wanted to get coffee tomorrow. He probably just wants to scam off my notes or something, it's no big deal."

She's rolling her eyes while she says that last part, like she always used to when she tried to seem like she understood everything more than she did. Like she knows no one could ever actually want to go out with her or some shit like that. He thinks it's kind of sad that she's developed so much since she moved away, but that she still doesn't think she's pretty enough for anyone to like her.

"Why do you always do that?" He asks, because he can't really help himself. He's stopped eating and she looks up from her plate and straight into his eyes.

"Do what?"

"Put yourself down like that. The guy asked you out for coffee, you could at least wait until you've gone before you write him off as some idiot who just wants you for your note-taking skills. Dude might actually like you, you know?"

"Well, in my experience that's not really very likely."

She's looking down again now, poking her food around her plate, and leaning her head on one hand. He thinks he should probably just drop it, just let it go and let her go on her coffee date determined that it's doomed. But he just hates that her brain still works like this. So he keeps pushing.

"Jesus Grace, your experience is pretty limited don't you think. Why does everything always have to be this way with you? You can't just let something develop, you have to decide how everything's gonna go before it's even had a chance to happen. It's like you have no idea how to just, like, _be_!"

He's hurt her, he can see it. She doesn't look up for a full minute and a half. He knows, he can see the microwave clock blinking behind her. _Fuck. _

When she does look up it's like he's instantly 18 years old again and he's sitting in his room in their garage smoking pot with her and trying not to look into her eyes for too long, lest he get swallowed up by them. He can see right into her at that moment, right down into the very core of everything she is and says and thinks about herself. He _sees_ her, like he hasn't in a long time.

"It's the only way I can protect myself." She practically whispers it, but it feels like she's yelling. She suddenly looks ridiculously tired and he's not surprised when she excuses herself to go to her room to lie down.

He doesn't really know how that happened. Because one moment he was just trying to get her to be more confident in her ability to snag a guy who would actually like her, and the next he was laying into her about being too uptight, and that's not what he had meant to happen at all. He doesn't understand why he couldn't have just left it alone, why he even had to ask about it, as she clearly wasn't going to tell.

He thinks he probably just crossed some really important line. Their whole relationship these days is based on this kind of _closeness_ they have without ever really having to like, bare their souls to each other or whatever. And now he's gone and changed that and he doesn't know how to like, close the door. So he figures he's just gonna have to bash it down.


	4. The virtues of darkest sin

Disclaimer: I don't own Once and Again, Grace, or Eli.

A/N: Thanks again for the reviews. This chapter is quite short, but it was kind of intense to write, so hopefully it will be a good read. Enjoy.

Bashing it down doesn't really work. Grace avoids him for like a week. He hears her on the phone the next morning cancelling her date and then he hears her go out to class without coming in to check that he's awake or offer him coffee or say goodbye. When he gets home that night he can hear music in her room and see the light under the door, so he knows she's home, but she doesn't answer when he knocks, and the food he leaves outside her door stays there until morning.

It continues this way for about four days, until they meet by accident outside the bathroom door one morning. _At last_, he thinks, _contact_. But his relief is short lived, because by the time he's had time to register her presence and come up with something to say she's walked down the hall and her door is shutting behind her. That's when he decides to literally try and bash down the door.

She doesn't respond. He's banging for like 40 minutes and he shouts himself hoarse trying to get her to come out and talk to him. He's rewarded with silence and sore knuckles. By the time the weekend comes to an end he's about to go crazy. He misses her, and he knows it's ridiculous because she _lives here_ but he misses talking to her over dinner and bugging her while she studies and generally just being around her. He wishes he could just take that stupid conversation back and go back to how it was. Except he doesn't really, because he thinks maybe he doesn't actually know her at all, this girl he lives with, whom he thought he knew pretty well. He thinks maybe she's been hiding herself and that makes him uncomfortable. He always felt like, no matter what else they were to each other, they were honest, their relationship was real. And now he wasn't so sure. So he doesn't really wish he could take it back. But he does wish she would just fucking _talk to him!_ But she won't, so he goes out and gets drunk for the first time in ages. Just down stairs to the bar next door, but still, it feels good, the beer sliding down his throat, cool and savoury, the warmth in his head making everything just a little less bright.

His dad used to warn him about this feeling. It's hereditary. And he doesn't indulge it often. But by God when he does it just feels so right, so good. It feels fucking _virtuous_, this feeling he has right now. But he knows that the virtue won't last, and eventually it'll start to feel like sin, in the worst possible way. Not the good kind of sin, all dressed up in lace and dark lipstick, the kind that has you stumbling home at 5am on a Thursday, not knowing where you spent the night or how you got there in the first place. That's the sin that makes you want to make everything stop, just end, you don't care how. That's the destination of this train, and everything else is just a mirage along the way.

So he drags himself home before it gets too good, because he knows that right after it gets _real_ good, it starts to get unbearable. He stands outside her door and listens to her not talking to him for at least five minutes, probably longer considering the state he's in. He probably mumbles something at her through the door, he can't remember if he did, or if he just thinks he did. And if he did he can't remember what it is.

"_Grace...I just...I fucking need you to talk to me ok? Just like, say something. No, you don't even have to say something, you just have to like, look at me or something. I'm drowning here. I feel like I'm drowning...I can't...fuck...I need you...I miss you...do you miss me? You're right there, but I miss you anyway...what is that?...Grace?"_

_

* * *

_

He doesn't remember getting into bed still wearing his overcoat, or setting his alarm for stupid o'clock (8.30) in the morning. He just knows he wakes up and she's there. She's fully standing in his room with a glass of water and some pills, turning the ringer on his clock off, which he is totally grateful for.

She smiles at him weakly, and he wonders what the hell he did as she helps him up and hands him the medicine and the water. He doesn't want to ask. Doesn't want to risk ruining it, but he's desperate to know. He drinks the water all the way down and pinches the bridge of his nose. Oh yeah, this is the other reason he stopped getting wasted. The older he gets the worse the hangovers get. _Ouch_.

But she's still there and she's smiling at him like he's some kind of idiot, which he probably is, if only he could remember, and he feels like he should say something. But then her hand is on his and his skin is like, humming or something, and she's _still_ smiling, so he smiles back, albeit weakly. And then with a brief squeeze of his knuckles under her palm she's gone, hurrying out the door saying something about class and extra credit and she'll be back later. And he must fall back asleep because he wakes up about eleven, just in time to shower before his shift and he can't figure out whether it was a dream or not. But when he gets up there's coffee in the pot, and there hasn't been for days, and he knows that it was real.

When he gets home from work that night she's planted in front of the tv watching Perry Mason reruns and annotating her poetry book, and she smiles at him as he wanders in. He cracks open a beer and she makes room for him on the couch, and it's honestly just like nothing ever happened. He can deal with that for now, he thinks as he tugs on her hair a little during commercials and she swats him away without even looking up, he can definitely deal with that.


	5. Unexpected

A/N: Hey, thanks everyone for reviewing! Slowly more and more E/G fans are making their way out of the woodwork, it's awesome that more of us still exist! Makes me feel less lonely and sad for trying to sail a sunken ship. Keep reading, it means a lot to me that you all like it. This was a pretty hard chapter for me to write, as it's pretty much the first of it's kind I've ever done, I hope that I managed to avoid the normal cliches and pitfalls and that it ended up being authentic, I did the best I could! Much Love.

Disclaimer: I don't own Once and Again or any of the characters involved.

* * *

It's exactly four weeks and a day before he kisses her by the sink in the fading light of a Tuesday evening. It's October now, and there's still that light that you find lingering at the end of Autumn, orange and hazy and almost like warmth, only not quite because you can feel the winter building in your bones and expanding outwards to chill your skin.

They're washing up their dinner things and talking about her Dad and the restaurant and how things change and stay the same all at once and then she says something that's just _so _Grace that it _kills _him. It literally _kills_ him to not be touching her in that moment, and so he does. He cards an absent hand through her hair as she dries her hands, and she smiles at him and offers him the towel.

And suddenly it's not enough for him to just be touching her, and he uses the hand entwined in her chestnut locks to pull her head to his and crashes into her before he's even thought about what he's doing. The force with which he kisses her astounds even him, as a desperation he didn't even realize he felt started overflowing the second his lips touched hers.

It's all kind of a blur when he thinks about it later. She gasps a little as he hauls her against him and he's sure that had he given her time she would have protested, but then his tongue is rubbing against hers, silky smooth and tasting like stroganoff, and he's sucking her lower lip in between his and his hands are tangled in her hair and she never even stood a chance.

He knows, somewhere in the back of his mind how much of an awful idea this is; that he should be thinking about the fact that they _live together_, and they're practically _siblings,_ and he works for her Dad and Jake is totally not someone you want to cross, and at this point she's practically the only friend he has and he's completely fucking up _everything._ But he's not thinking about any of that at all, he's thinking about how soft her lips are under his, and the way she smells, and how he just loves the way her hair tangles in his hands, and how her own hands have risen to grasp his arms below his wrists, and whether or not that means she wants him to stop, or keep going, or whether she even knows she's done it.

He's so caught up in her, in the _feel_ of her that he forgets to breathe and has to pull back just as suddenly as he dove in. His hands stay in her hair as he holds her at arm's length while he tries desperately to catch his breath. He's focusing on her feet, in white cotton socks, so tiny. There is no sound but his ragged breathing, until he hears her breaths coming just as fast and unruly as his own. He raises his head to meet her eyes and is greeted with panic, wild and raw, her chest rising and falling in a violent staccato. He watches as she takes one of her hands from where it rests on his wrist and touches it to her mouth in wonder, her eyes burning into his with disbelief.

She starts to pull away, he can feel the tension in her arms and her head moving backwards, and he doesn't know what it is he's doing, but he knows he's not ready to be done touching her yet. So he curls his fingers further into her hair and steps into her, foreheads touching, breaths mingling as he looks her in the eye.

"Hey." He breathes, and she practically _feels_ the word as it floats between them. Hey? _Hey?_ Is what he has to say right now? Her mind is sprinting in several hundred different directions at once; and her heart is thumping so loudly she could swear that if she looks down she'll see it leaping out of her chest beneath her skin; and she's focusing really damn hard on drawing breaths because she knows that if she doesn't _keep_ telling herself to breath she probably just won't. Because this guy who she lives with, who is basically her best friend and who is _actually_ her step-brother and who is just this perfect _symbol_ of this ridiculous ideal that she had conjured up for herself when she was sixteen wherein she led this wild, romantic, impulsive life, this guy who she idolized for most of her adolescence is standing in their kitchen holding onto her with what certainly seems like desperation and she honestly doesn't think she can function if she doesn't just _focus_ on breathing. In. And out.

She's falling apart just standing there and he wants to exchange pleasantries?

Oh God this was bad. Really _really_ bad. Awful, even. What were they doing? What was _he_ doing? As far as she was concerned this had been a perfectly normal Tuesday and she had just been thinking about her literary criticism assignment that was due on Friday and whether or not she should have dessert and all of a sudden he was pressed up against her and his mouth was on hers and she _stopped breathing_. This was entirely irresponsible and ridiculous and oh God her lips were _throbbing_, and she must be blushing like mad and she's wearing _dungarees_ and how, _how is this happening?_

"No, no Grace, Gracie don't do that ok? I can see those wheels turning in your head. I can practically _feel_ you thinking ok? Just, don't. Just- God I don't know, just-"

And then he's kissing her again. And _God _it's wonderful. She's had a little time to process now and she's less focused on the _holy crap!_ aspect of this whole kissing thing, and more focusing on the Eli's mouth on hers, Eli's tongue on hers, Eli's hands in her hair and Eli's body pressing her into the kitchen counter aspect of it and _good God_ it's seriously _wonderful_.

The best thing about it though, is that it's wonderful in a way she had never imagined it would be. When she'd thought about kissing Eli, and she'll admit to herself she used to think about it a _whole_ lot, it was always hard and hot and needy and kind of almost painful, but in the most amazing gut-wrenching way. But this?

_This_ was a whole other kettle of seriously incredible fish. She could feel the desperation in him, he was like, pouring his life into her right now, but his fingers brushing against her scalp were light and when he pulled on her hair it was ever so slightly and not at all the sharp tugging she had envisioned. His lips were soft and smooth and moving against hers with so little pressure that she almost wasn't sure whether he was actually touching her.

This was seriously amazing.

She had to make it stop.

She tried to pull away again, but his hands in her hair held her close and even if they didn't she's not really sure how far she would have gotten. And when she looks in his eyes she sees something dark there, something she's almost afraid of, but that she wants _ardently_, and when his thumbs start rubbing circles against her temples and he brushes his nose against hers, she knows that if he wants this, she won't be able to stop it.

"Grace." Oh God, he wants this. "Let me, just, oh Jesus, just let me do this, ok? Just let me have this."

He lays his forehead on hers and brushes the tips of their noses together, and when she nods, barely perceptibly, he fuses his lips to hers again and pulls her with him towards his bedroom.

This is probably the worst thing she's ever done, but as his arms wind around her and his fingertips dig into the soft flesh of her hips underneath the back panel of her dungarees (and honestly, has she ever been more mortified that she's wearing _dungarees_?) she's not sure that it's not also kind of the best.


	6. In the light of dusk

Disclaimer: I don't own once and again, or Eli or Grace

A/n: Hey, sorry it's taken a while to update, I had to MOVE and that is stressful. Thank you for all your lovely comments, and for still loving these guys like I do. I hope you all enjoy this chapter. I'm trying to update as quickly as I can.

* * *

All through the next day, she keeps having these _flashes_ of the night before. Honestly, she's walking down the street or getting coffee or sitting in class and suddenly she can _feel_ him, and see them together and she's just experiencing it all again. It's so dramatic, and ridiculous, and the kind of thing that only happens in films, but she feels like it's happening over and over again on a constant loop in her brain. And it worries her that she doesn't necessarily think that that's a bad thing.

She had sex with Eli. She's sitting in the café down the street from their apartment, pretending to read her book but really just thinking about this. This one thing that she's been thinking about all day long. She had sex with Eli. She giggles. Legitimately _giggles_ into her cappuccino. God she is _such_ a _girl_.

She takes a long sip of her coffee and closes her eyes and for the briefest moment she can feel his fingertips as they trail up and down her spine, blazing a trail with fire and leaving ice in its wake. She can feel his thumbs against her neck, all pressure and circles and directing her face to his. She swears for a moment she sees his eyes as they meet hers while his hands fumble with the clasps on her _ridiculous_ dungarees and she smiles as his sheepish grin forms itself in her mind and _God_ he's just so _beautiful_, how did this happen?

* * *

She gives up on reading and coffee and trying to be outside because she knows she's doing an awful job of being in the world today. The apartment is quiet when she gets home, Eli is working an earlier shift today, but he still won't be home for about an hour and she wanders around their place for a little while, trying to think of something to do with herself that doesn't involve what happened yesterday. She makes herself some tea and doesn't drink it. She turns on the tv and doesn't know what she's watching. She opens the fridge and closes it again and then finally she stops in the kitchen and turns to face the rest of the apartment. Out of the corner of her eye she sees it. Eli's bedroom. Eli's _bedroom_. Where she's been countless times and where she's hung out and cleaned and slept and watched movies. Only now it's Eli's bedroom where she's been naked, where she's committed sin after sin after _wonderful_ sin and she is drawn into it by memories and fear and an overwhelming sense to _feel_ it now, the room.

Rooms have _feelings_, she's always thought, an atmosphere about them that can vary drastically from the room adjacent for hundreds of different reasons that can never be discerned. What does Eli's room _feel_ like now? Will it be different? When she walks over there will she be drowned in the fragile remnants of their night together? Or will it be the same, unchanged by events insignificant in comparison to every other thing that happened in the world last night?

She stands in the doorway for a moment and breathes in. It smells like him in here, like _them_. The sheets are rumpled and strewn carelessly across the bed and she remembers crawling out of them this morning, sliding out from underneath his arm across her waist, and glancing back at him as she tiptoed out on her way to class.

She crosses to the bed and brushes her fingers along the top of the sheets, tracing each ridge and furrow of the slightly scratchy cotton as she takes deep breaths of the thick, lust-filled air. She's gone before she knows it, lost to the sensations of his kisses and touches and getting everything you ever wanted at the last moment you ever expected it.

She closes her eyes tight as she falls backwards onto the bed and she can _feel_ him nudging her toward the bed with his knees and laying her down slowly into the single pillow he has, hovering over her, weight on his hands as he studies her face. She can still feel the anticipation buzzing around inside of her as she watched him lower his face to hers and marry their lips, slow and soft, feel the shiver run through her as he maneuvered his arms to rest on his elbows by her head, fingers playing with her fanned out hair.

She falls asleep on a sigh, curled up on her side, face burrowed into his sheets, remembering the feel of him.

* * *

When she wakes it's getting dark, it's actually _dusk_, she thinks, and smiles to herself because she remembers this conversation she had with Eli once just after Carla left, when she was trying to cheer him up by just _talking_ about whatever the hell came to mind. She'd been reading this book at the time and the main character in it kept going around challenging people to duels at dusk, and she'd wondered aloud about whether dusk was actually a time and they'd spent about half an hour talking about whether or not they ever remembered it actually _being_ dusk, and how all of these people that were being challenged to duels would know exactly when to show up. It was an entirely ridiculous conversation but she had managed to get him to laugh, and so had spent the next day feeling giddy every time he smiled at her.

She gets up and pads into the living room, pulling her hair into a loose ponytail as she goes, and stops just short of the couch because _he's_ there, leaning against the kitchen counter, sipping from a beer bottle and playing with the label. When he looks up and sees her he smiles softly and lays the beer down beside him.

"Hey." He says, and she rolls her eyes, because she has about a million things she wants to say, and it seems like whenever there's a situation that she feels deserves a long discussion using a wide and imaginative vocabulary, all he wants to do is exchange pleasantries.

"Hey." She says back, wrapping her arms around herself. He swallows and sticks his hands in his pockets, head inclining toward the window and nodding slightly.

"It's uh- it's dusk." He smiles at her and raises his eyebrows, daring her to remember, and she laughs.

"Yeah, E, it is." He's fully grinning at her now and opens his arms wide, jerking his head at her.

"C'mere." He tells her. He doesn't have to tell her twice. She's in his arms before you could blink, nose buried in his chest and just _inhaling_ him. He's holding her tight, one hand cradling the back of her head and his face is in her hair, and she thinks she feels him _sniff_. She thinks maybe he had the same kind of day that she did.

"Hi." She mumbles into his sweater, and his chuckle makes his whole chest move. He tangles a hand in her hair and eases her head back so he can look her in the eye.

"Hi." He says as he studies her face, running a thumb over her cheek.

And then he kisses her again, and her world goes black.


	7. Ad Finem

Disclaimer: I don't own Once and Again or Eli and Grace and I'm not making any profit from writing this story. The poem at the end is _Ad Finem _by Ella Wheeler Wilcox so I don't own that either.

Author's note: Thank you guys so much for your lovely comments! It's so nice to hear from the E/G shippers still in existence, and I'm ridiculously happy that you actually like what I'm doing here. A lot of people have mentioned the lamentable lack of new E/G fic, with which I'm in total agreement, and I absolutely _have_ to recommend this story - _That's how years roll away _by _lowriseflare_ which I apparently can't link to, but which you can find easily if you type that into google - which is beautiful and perfect and pretty much the reason I started writing this one. It's the best E/G fic I've ever read. No Jokes. I thought you all should know :)

I hope everyone enjoys the new chapter!

* * *

Kissing Grace is an _experience_, he's decided, he's been thinking about it all day. Which is strange for him because they did a lot more than kiss last night and it was all pretty amazing and he's never really been much for kissing anyway, it was more of a prelude than the fugue itself, and he's always just been more focused on the main event.

But kissing Grace is just, wow. It's like, seriously intense, which doesn't really surprise him because she always was intense, and overwhelming, the Grace he knew then. And he knows in some ways that the Grace he is kissing is that one, the younger Grace who had worn his sweater for three days on end and brushed his hand off her shoulder when he walked in from the rain. The Grace he has now would never kiss him with this much _passion_, this much, for want of a better word, _zeal. _She throws herself into it, feeling _every_ moment like it's not supposed to be there and she's just getting a glimpse of the life she would have wished for herself. The Grace he has now would never kiss him at all.

But _Grace Manning_ (because when he thinks of her then it's always her full name), Grace Manning would have kissed him for all she was worth, would have wrapped her arms tight around him and tugged on his bottom lip and run her tongue along the roof of his mouth in a way that he never even knew could be sexy, because objectively that's kind of weird, and savor it like an ice cream in the desert.

And that's the Grace that he's all wrapped up in, standing in their tiny kitchen, swaying awkwardly and clinging desperately to as he tries not to fall over. These are the kisses that have kept his day going, kept his mind from the inevitable, the guilt, the shame, the fear that he's just _broken_ everything. He knows he'll have to stop, they'll have to stop, but he thinks with just a few more of these kisses he can make himself stronger, build himself up to resist them, like inoculation almost. Just a few more kisses before they have to leave each other.

No one ever really told him a definition of the word few. More than three, less than a lot. It's subjective really. He kisses her for twenty minutes before pulling away.

When he does pull away it's not very far. She's warm beside him and he wants to keep her there, but he also wants to talk to her. She's got her eyes closed and her mouth open against the side of his chin and it's so…_something_…intimate, he thinks, that his chest hurts a little and his throat kind of spasms, watching her like this is just _beautiful_.

"Grace." He whispers, half because he doesn't want to say it, and half because it was the only sound he could manage to make. He whispers it into her temple, and hopes she won't hear him. She does. She always does.

"Don't." She says back, quiet and breathy. She squeezes her eyes closed, he can feel her lashes against his cheek, feel her fingers against his throat, fingertips clutching at his skin, he can feel _her_, and it's making this _so_ much harder.

"I have to." He says, regretfully, pulling away from her and picking up his beer. He takes a long swig and replaces it on the counter, it gives him a moment, a beat, to focus on anything but her, to get himself together and say what has to be said.

When he looks at her again she's smiling, her lips curling upwards on one side in a motion that's half secret, and half sadness. He can't help but smile back at her, her open face warming his heart, pulling at something in the depths of his stomach. This was so hard. Harder now, now that he knew how she felt, how she moves beneath him, harder now that he's had her to give her away.

"Soo." He says and blows out a rush of air, sticking his hands in his pockets to stop them from doing something else with them.

"Yeah." She says back, her arms wrapping around her middle again, protecting the most vulnerable parts of her from what she knows is to come.

They both laugh a little, and it feels easier, even if it's not.

"This is a bad idea right?" He makes it a question because he wants to be sure, and he is, he almost is, but she's _Grace _and she knows things and understands things better than him and if she says that it's a bad idea then he'll be certain that it is. He always trusted her judgement better than his own.

"Yeah." She says, and his heart trips over itself by trying to beat too fast and not at all both at the same time, because secretly, his heart, his horrible, _treacherous_ heart was hoping that she'd deny it. That she would tell him a way for it to all be ok. That she would make it work. She was _so_ smart, there must be a way. How could she not think of it? How could she not have a plan for them? She was Grace, she had a plan for _everything_. "Yeah, it really is."

He scrubs a hand over his face and pinches the bridge of his nose. He hadn't really planned out this conversation, he'd kind of been hoping she'd cut him off and lay out some wild, romantic, magnificent plan where they move to Paris and live in secret and that he'd never have to have the second half of the conversation at all.

Obviously that wasn't going to happen.

"So what now?" He asks her, he needs another drink. There's cold beer in the fridge and scotch in the top cupboard and he wants them both, he goes for the beer because there's less chance that he'll end up _needing_ that. He pops the cap on one and passes it to her before pulling another for himself. She hops up onto the countertop and swings her legs aimlessly into and away from the cupboard doors., taking a long gulp from her drink.

"Now nothing." She finally says after a few more gulps of her beer, shoulders shrugging, legs still swinging in and out. "We draw a line under it and go back to how we were."

"You can do that?" He asks, and he's kind of angry, even though he knew that was what they were supposed to do.

"We have to." She says shrugging again and finishing her beer. He misses the Grace from yesterday, from ten minutes ago, the Grace who grabbed onto him and _couldn't_ let go, the Grace who would have said to hell with everything else, I _need _this feeling. This Grace, _grownup_ Grace, is practical and reasonable and everything he wishes she weren't at this moment. If she weren't then he wouldn't have to be, and he could keep believing for a little while longer.

"Maybe not." He says, and she laughs, and he hates her. Literally hates her for that. "What! Why couldn't we just- just- Why couldn't we?" She's still laughing, but it's humorless and sour, she swings her legs out and hooks her ankles around his knees where he's leaning against the fridge and pulls him into her. His hands land on either side of her thighs and his forehead falls on hers. He can feel her hands cradling his cheeks and she dips her head to meet his eyes.

"You know why not, E, you know you do. We have parents and sisters and aunts and friends and _consciences_ and you know why we can't do this. It's not real, not really. We're here and we're together and there's nothing else and we've gotten _lost_ in it, but it's not real, it wouldn't survive and we'd _lose_ each other. I don't want to lose you Eli, you're kind of the only friend I have." He laughs, and she kicks him gently in the shins, and then laughs herself, her head tipping back and her hands coming down to rest on his shoulders, and he feels something that he thinks is relief.

"Yeah, I know." He manages to say, and then he smiles at her before pulling away. "I know." He says again and he turns away from her as he feels his face start to crumble. A few deep breaths are all he needs. A few deep breaths and another beer, and maybe half a bottle of scotch.

He hears her, somewhere behind him, jumping down from the counter and moving across to him. Her arms come around his middle from behind and rest on his chest, her nose digs into his back and she smoothes her face across the plane of his shoulder blade.

"To know for an hour you were mine completely-  
Mine in body and soul, my own-  
I would bear unending tortures sweetly,  
With not a murmur and not a moan.  
A lighter sin or a lesser error  
Might change through hope or fear divine;  
But there is no fear, and hell has no terror,  
To change or alter a love like mine."

It's muffled, she's speaking into his back. But he hears it, _feels_ it in his veins. And then she's gone, the front door slipping closed quietly as he stands there, silently breaking and trying to rebuild himself in the shape of something else.


	8. I remember you

Disclaimer: I don't own once and again or Eli or Grace, this is all just me messing around

A/N: Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far, and thanks to whomever told me that the link from the last chapter to the story I wanted to reccomend didn't work, I've changed it to the name of the title and author so you should be able to find it. If you have time, check it out, it really is beautiful. I hope you all continue to read and enjoy the story :) - this chapter is quite short, but I'll update as soon as I can

* * *

They don't see each other for another week. She knows his schedule so well that it's relatively easy to avoid him. She stays at the library all night or crashes at a friend's, comes home after he's gone to work, goes out before he comes home.

She feels ok. She feels like she can breathe. She thinks he's ok too. Last time she avoided him there were more bottles in the trash, more dishes in the sink, more sadness in the air. This time when she goes back to the apartment everything seems neat, normal. She thinks that means that he's doing ok too.

After a week she comes back from class at six and sets up on the couch with her anthology and old episodes of TJ Hooker. He walks in the door at eight and drops his keys on the counter. When she looks up he's standing by the counter and looking at her, unsure, and she gives him a small smile and then turns back to her books.

She hears him exhale harshly and move around the kitchen. A minute later the couch dips beside her and she feels his leg, warm against hers and his fingers tugging on the ends of her hair. She turns to him and smiles and he smiles back. And that's how they pass their evening, on the couch, with books and beer and bad tv like they never kissed, or touched, or loved. Like they hadn't known each other in the dark and quiet of lingering touches and heated breaths. Like they hadn't _felt_ each other in every way it was possible to feel a person. And then, when midnight came and Grace stood and stretched and gathered her things to take to bed, the only indication that they had ever been more to each other than two people sitting next to each other on a sofa was the brush of his fingertips on hers and a meeting of eyes in the low light of the television.

Things go back to normal. To how they're meant to be. To how they were before they'd fallen together in weakness. They chat and watch tv and eat dinner and _exist_ around each other without delving too deeply into each other's lives. It's a quiet existence, and not really whole, but it's calm, and without difficulty, and comfortable for the time, and _needed_, by both of them, to maintain the balance of whatever they'd convinced themselves of in order to find it.

For Grace, it helped to have appearances of normality. As long nothing appeared to have changed, she could pretend that nothing had. She could eat and sleep and do homework and read books and she could do it all in the same room as him. The only problem came when he would _touch_ her. A certain amount of touching was necessary, normal even, when you lived with a person, this she knew. But every night, as she went to bed, Eli's fingers would brush against hers.

It was the lightest touch. Imperceptible, unimportant, barely there really. But she felt it _everywhere_. In that one touch she could feel every spot he'd ever touched her, every place his eyes had ever looked, every feeling he'd ever evoked in her, and they ran through her veins like syrup; slow and sticky and clogging. Each night he would _touch_ her and she would _feel_ him, feel the message she was sure he was trying to send her.

_I remember you_

And she'd look him in the eyes and want to drown in him. Every night she wants to go to him, to touch him and hold him and have him all over again but she doesn't, and she sometimes can't remember why. Every night it takes several hours for her to remove him from her dreams and every night he crawls his way back in with one touch, and one look.

She remembers him too.

Eli has a much harder time of it, which he would never have predicted to be the case. His entire relationship with this girl has been building up to this point, and he's always thought, always been sure that when the time came to walk away, he would be the one with the firm stride and determined eyes, and that she would be the one to want him to stay.

As it turns out, she's a lot stronger and he needs her a lot more than he had ever thought possible.

He spends as much time in the apartment as he can. Which isn't hard, he didn't really have a huge social life before all this happened, and the little that he does have was never really important to him anyway. He goes to work, he comes home, he watches her. It sucks.

She's just so _distant_. She's there, and she's next to him and she's the same as she ever was but he knows now, what lies beneath, what hides inside. He knows beneath the lacquered surface of her muted smile there is _heat_ and _need_ and _desire_. He knows her, inside and out, and he knows that she is more than this.

He'd think that she was absolutely fine, that nothing that had happened had affected her at all. He'd think that she was heartless and careless and so much more besides. Except that every night, when she stands and proclaims her intention to go to bed (he never goes first, he always waits) he reaches his hand out to her and strokes his fingers along the edges of hers and she stops. She breathes in and out and looks at him and her eyes in that moment are wild and scared and _free_, and he knows, whatever she might say, whatever that asshole of an English teacher might have said back in the day, that his Grace? She's one hell of an actress.

They're in limbo. In Purgatory. In a special kind of hell that she thinks is devised only for them. He's miserable and moody and practically _housebound_, and she feels guilty and horrible and _oppressed_, and they're locked in this place where nothing's ever going to change unless she forces it to.

So one morning, after her 20th Century class she walks up to Si, the guy who had asked her for coffee weeks ago, when all of this was just a sordid twinkle in a dusty eye, and she puts on her most charming smile and she asks him out. Then, she goes home and tells Eli. Then, she goes to her room and tries her hardest not to cry.


	9. As men do

A/N: Sorry it's taken me a while to update. I've been working on other things and this took a little bit of a back seat. I hope everyone enjoys it, and I'll try and update soon. As always, thanks for reading :)

* * *

Working at the restaurant is pretty decent. Good hours, free food, nice tips, and a boss who doesn't completely hate his guts. Jake's actually pretty cool with him, considering all the guy must know from Lilly about his behavior as a teenager. Although, Lilly was always pretty cool with him too, giving him space, and talking to him like he was an adult and not a child, so maybe his report card from her hadn't been as harsh as it would have been from his mom or dad.

Sometimes, in the evening after the restaurant closes – he started working the close shifts a lot since Grace has been seeing this guy – Jake likes to sit at the bar and have a scotch and shoot the breeze for a little while. He's started inviting Eli to join him, and Eli likes to. He thinks it's a cool thing to do, straight out of the old school, when men would sit down at the end of the day and drink scotch and _be_ _men._

"You know, Eli," Jake says to him one night as they're sitting side by side, sipping at warm liquid spice from crystal tumblers that feel _just right_ in your hand, "you're doing pretty good here."

Eli smiles and ducks his head. It's pretty weird, because working at the restaurant is not difficult, and it's not hard to be good at it as long as you show up on time, wearing a shirt and shoes, and don't yell at customers, but when Jake says that to him he gets this surge of _pride_ all the way up his spine, and his chest puffs and his face flushes. He feels like a kid again, producing macaroni art for his mom to put on the refrigerator and beaming up at her when she coos over it as though he were Monet. It feels good; to be told you're good at something, to have a job where he's not getting yelled at every other day for being a screw-up.

He chuckles a little to hide his smile, and takes another sip from his drink.

"What?" Jake asks, turning a little to face him, "You are. I mean it." He can feel the older man's eyes on him, waiting for him to turn and acknowledge that Eli _knows_ that he means it. Their eyes meet and Jake nods a little, sets his glass on the bar and turns toward him fully, one elbow on the bar, one foot on the rail of his chair. Not for the first time, Eli thinks about how much of a _man_ Jake seems in just that one movement, and how much of a _boy_ he must seem in comparison.

He wonders how you become a man, like Jake, like his father. How does that happen? He thinks he's grown; grown older, grown better, grown _up_. He can handle being a grown up. He's not sure he's ever going to be able to pull off being an _adult_.

"Look," Jake begins, and then takes a swig from his glass, "I know that this is not, that you didn't take this job because you wanted to get into the restaurant business. I know what this is for you. But, you should know that, you're doing really well here, and if you want them, there are opportunities that could be available to you."

Eli's not sure if it's the scotch, or if he's really having this conversation, but he's fairly certain that Jake just offered him a promotion. He thinks it's the scotch. He should probably check.

"What are you saying?" He asks tentatively, darkly, he's not used to this, to things being this easy, to opportunities just being dropped in his lap like this.

"Well, Henry told me yesterday that his wife got a job in New York and they're gonna be moving at the end of next month. I thought you might like to try on an Assistant Manager's shirt, see how it fit." Jake's up now, and walking round to the other side of the bar. Everyone else has gone for the night and his scotch needs refilling.

"Why me?" Eli asks him quietly, he's sure this can't be real, has to make sure, has to double check.

Jake pours them both new drinks and sets the bottle on the bar. He picks up his glass and draws from it, smiling a little as he puts it down.

"I've got two daughters." He says, and meets Eli's eyes, his smile looking a little more like embarrassment now than anything else. "I've got two daughters whom I love very much, and who I'm more proud of than I ever imagined a father could be. But neither of them want to take over this business when I can't run it anymore, Grace will be off in some far away country writing books and having love affairs, and Zoe, God knows what Zoe will be doing but it's not going to be this. You're a good kid, Eli, and I like you a lot. You uh- you remind me a lot of me, actually." He stops again for another smile and a drink. "And I guess, the thing is, in my heart, I kind of always wanted to keep this place, you know, in the family. And in whatever strange and wonderful way it is, you and I, we're pretty much family. You're sort of my only hope."

He says the last bit and downs the rest of his drink quickly. Only meeting Eli's eyes for a fraction of a second before replacing the scotch bottle and making his way back around the front of the bar.

"Anyway," he says quietly, patting Eli on the back a couple of times, "think about it and let me know." And then he's gone, packing his things away in the office. Eli thinks that's his cue to leave, and he spends the walk home in a kind of half-daze, trying to decide whether or not that really just happened. Trying to decide if this is something that he wants.

Grace is still up when he gets home, which is rare these days. But he clocks her shoes still on her feet and her keys on the sideboard and he figures she probably only just got back herself. She's got the refrigerator open and she hands him a beer as he crosses to her, nodding in thanks and taking it, careful not to touch her hand as they make the transfer. She grabs one for herself and hops up onto the counter before opening it.

"You smell like scotch." She tells him, and wrinkles her nose. He laughs.

"I've been drinking with your dad." He tells her as he takes a pull from his beer. She rolls her eyes.

"Oh God." He laughs again. "That's new." He shrugs and takes another sip. He knows she doesn't approve. She loves her dad, he knows, but she also kind of thinks he's a cad, and she wouldn't like the fact that Eli kind of looks up to him, enjoys his company. She'd think that it was a really bad idea for him and Jake to become, for want of something better to call it, _friends_.

"I guess." He says, and shrugs. His hand goes to his pocket, he looks down at his feet. He wants to tell her, about their conversation. Wants to talk it through with her, know what she thinks, but their boundaries are drawn in dust and water-colour paint these days, and he doesn't quite know where this one lies.

"What?" She asks, and he pretty much loves that she knows something's up with him. Loves that she asks. Because as unsure as he is of their boundaries, as careful as he's trying to be not to cross them, he's absolutely desperate to abolish them all.

The walls went back up six weeks ago, when she started dating Si. All the walls were rebuilt around and between them and he felt like he'd been shut inside his own heart, waiting for the cement to erode gradually around him. But slowly, carefully, they'd been removing bricks. Stone by stone they were deconstructing the walls they had built, testing the new limits of their relationship. This was another stone he could add to the pile, and he was glad of it.

"He uh-" he chuckles a little bit, "he offered me a job." He looks up at her in hope, anticipation. Her eyebrows knit together.

"You already work for him." She says, confused, and he rolls his eyes.

"Yeah. A different one." She nods, and waits for him to tell her what it is. "He wants me to be assistant manager."

He is not prepared for the grin that breaks out on her face. He thought she'd be skeptical, or disappointed or something. He did not expect her to just be happy for him.

"That's great, E." She tells him, still smiling.

"Yeah?" God. He hates that he's so unsure of everything. That he needs her approval. He doesn't, not really, not _need _it, but having it always makes everything seem so much better. She's so much better than him at _life_, and somewhere in his mind he's sure he thinks she knows _everything_. So having her approve of something is like, proof that it will work. He still hates that about himself though, that he trusts her judgment more than his own.

"Yeah." She says brightly. And then she seems to pause midway through something, and reconsider. "I mean, if you want it. It's good if it's what you want." She tilts her head to one side and squints at him, her unasked question hanging heavy in the air.

_Is it what you want?_

And he doesn't know! Doesn't know if it's what he wants, or what he thinks he wants, or what he fears most of all in all the world.

"I was kind of hoping you'd be able to tell me." He mutters, and her gentle laugh rings across the room, hanging, like her question, in the space between them. She hops down from the counter and pads across to him, stopping just in front of him and forcing his eyes to hers.

"You know I can't do that Eli." She tells him softly, her face warm and open, affection ebbing from her smile. "That's something you have to figure out for yourself. But congratulations."

She hugs him then, and he can pretty much feel his heart drop into his shoes. It's the first time they've really _touched_, outside of the lingering fingers that brush against each other each night, since the night they walked away from each other. He hasn't forgotten the feel of her, the weight of her in his arms. If he's being honest, these past six weeks it's felt like something was missing from his body, and having her there now felt like some vital part of him had been put back where it belonged.

He held on a little tighter than he should have, and for a little longer. But then again so did she. He can feel her breathing deep against his chest, feel the hot little puffs of air that filter through his sweater. He knows she feels this just as much as she does.

When she pulls back her eyes are glistening and she has the saddest smile on her face. Grace has always had the _saddest_ smile, the kind that hits you right in the stomach. He always wandered, when they were teenagers, how the hell she got so sad, and how the hell she was smiling through it. How on earth does a person garner the strength to smile when they are just struggling to stay above water?

He brings his thumbs to her cheeks and rubs lightly along them, a whisper across her skin, so soft, so sweet. She raises her hands to his and holds him there a moment, and then she's gone from him again.

"Goodnight Eli." Floating backwards from her form as she makes her way to her room and shuts the door behind him.

"Goodnight, Grace." He offers to the empty room, absentmindedly, unnecessarily. He goes to sleep thinking of Jake and her and his dad and _family_, and wakes up no wiser than he was when he went to bed.


	10. I will lay me down

So this has taken a long time for me to update, sorry, stuff's been going down. But I'm back, and hopefully everyone still enjoys the story :)

* * *

She breaks up with Si at the beginning of December, because he's honestly kind of boring and when she tells him and he just kind of shrugs and sips his coffee, she thinks he probably didn't really like her all that much anyway. She goes home and spends the night drinking beer and watching JAG reruns with Eli, laughing easily as he points out plot-holes and continuity errors, laying her head comfortably on his shoulder when it gets too fuzzy to stay upright by itself.

When it comes time to go to bed she finds herself feeling incredibly lethargic, and allows him to sling an arm around her waist and help her to her room and into bed. She falls back onto her pillows and thanks God that she put her pyjamas on as soon as she got out of the shower, so she doesn't have to think about changing. She's halfway to sleep when she feels hands lifting her feet and drawing her covers over her, and the soft ghost of a hand brushing against her cheek. She feels, rather than sees the lights go out, and when she dreams, it's of gentle hands and whispers and him.

She wakes up with a headache and a tiny hole in her heart, and decides she's not going to drink again.

* * *

Jake invites Eli to Christmas dinner with them, as his mom and Henry are going to Henry's parents' in Arizona, and Jake practically thinks of Eli as a son anyway. They drive over to his house in the morning, bright sunlight glaring off of the freshly fallen snow, the air inside the car is crisp and fragrant, and she can see his breath as he huffs into his hands trying to warm them up while he waits for the windscreen to clear.

He puts on a CD of some punk band she knows he used to love singing Christmas songs and she giggles at him when he starts jigging his head around erratically and grinning like the teenage idiot she remembers him being. She raises an arch eyebrow and he scrunches his face up even more and goes a little bit crazy with his arms, she laughs again, she misses him just being a complete dork sometimes.

She stares out the window as they drive along the near-deserted streets that lead to her father's house. She never gets tired of Chicago at Christmas, blankets of bright white snow and rows and rows of houses all decked up with lights and firs and bells have always been one of her favorite things about this town. She stares out the window and lets a smile spread across her face, and when she feels his cold fingers slip along her own and tangle them together, she keeps looking out the window, and lets herself enjoy the sensation of holding his hand, without thinking about what it means or what it might lead to or what's going to happen with them.

When the car pulls into her Dad and Tiffany's driveway they stay there for a few moments, two pairs of eyes focusing only on their joined hands. And then, without looking at each other, without ceremony, they part, and head into the house.

Dinner is actually really lovely, it's a much quieter Christmas than she's used to, but there's champagne and soft jazz carols playing in the background, and smiles and laughter and the slow unpeeling of wrapping paper, instead of the tearing and the shrieking that has always, in her mind, been synonymous with this particular day. It all feels very civilized, very grown up, and when she gets up to help Tiffany carry the plates into the kitchen, she feels like she could possibly be a grown up, a real one.

She likes to see the way her dad looks at Eli, like he's proud of him, fond of him. She's glad that Eli has that, someone he can look up to, even if it is her father, who she suspects never had much of a moral compass, but whom she loves, and whom she knows is essentially good, even if he does allow himself to be lead astray a little too easily.

All in all it's a wonderful day. She wishes it were only a little bit different.

* * *

Grace is quiet on the way home, well, she was quiet on the way there too. She's been kind of quiet today. He wonders if he should take her hand again, or if it was sort of a one-time, Christmas morning thing. It's hard to tell, and in the end he decides against it, they've had such a nice day and he doesn't want to be the jerk-off who basically ruins Christmas for her, he knows how much she loves it.

When they get back to the apartment he watches as she strolls into the kitchen and toes off her shoes, kicking them beneath the counter and grabbing two beers from the fridge. He smiles when she hands him one and flops down on the couch, she expects him to join her. He does, and they sit there for a few minutes not talking, just sipping their beers. He doesn't think he'll ever find anyone that he's _this_ comfortable with.

"I think I have to move out." She says casually, taking a pull from her bottle and turning her head so that she can look at him properly.

"I think that idea blows." She chuckles, he takes another drink, he's being completely serious.

"So do I, but it's the best one I got." He wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulls her into him so she's tucked tight against his side, and lays a kiss against the hair on top of her head. She sighs and snuggles into him a little more, and is quiet again.

He's stroking the backs of his fingers up and down the top of her arm, his eyes are closed, he can smell her shampoo.

"Tonight, when we said goodbye, my dad called you son." She hasn't moved, he would have felt it, so he stays where he is, his eyes stay closed as he thinks about where she's going with this.

"Yeah," he says slowly, "he does that sometimes."

"I wished it meant something different." He breathes out, and thinks about how it could be, what it would feel like if Jake would call him son because he was in love with his daughter, and not because he was the closest thing he was ever gonna get to being his son just by virtue of being his ex-wife's step-son. He thinks it would feel incredible, and also that it will never happen.

It's then that he decides he's going to kiss her. He moves slowly, she can say no if she wants to, but thankfully she doesn't seem to want to, and when his lips meet hers it's the most incredible thing. He didn't think he was going to get to do this again.

He kisses her long and slow, and everywhere, and she lets him. She lets him pick her up off the couch and carry her to his room and lay her down there, pressed back into the mattress by his weight and his fervor, by his _intent_. When he slips inside of her she whispers his name against his lips, he thinks maybe that noise is all he will ever need again, and when he falls apart she follows him down, and then they're both flying in the most terrifyingly beautiful abyss.

"Don't move out." He tells her afterwards, laying in his bed with his arms wrapped around her it seems incredibly important to say. "We'll figure it out Grace, we'll do it somehow, but I don't want you to move out."

She leans up on an elbow and looks at him earnestly for a good long while, he looks back, meeting her eyes.

"Ok." She says as she slides back down, and his arms tighten around her as they fall asleep.


	11. Family matters

A/N: Hi folks, sorry it's taken so long to update. I was having some trouble deciding where to go with this, but I think I've got it now, this baby probably has two more chapters in it before it's done. Thank you to everyone who's following the story and everyone who has reviewed, it really means a lot to me.

* * *

Jessie comes to visit in March. It rains pretty much the entire time and they spend a lot of afternoons sitting around the coffee table in the lounge playing board games and watching movies. It's really cool, having her there, someone else to talk to, someone he doesn't have to impress.

Things are going well at the restaurant, Jake seems pleased with the work he's doing and he's trying really hard not to screw it up. He takes Jessie in with him one afternoon and she eats at the bar while he goes about his business. Every so often he'll glance over and she's smiling at him like she's proud or something, and he gets really warm all of a sudden and doesn't know where to look. It's good to know that she thinks he's doing ok, that she doesn't have to feel sorry for her loser of a big brother. He always kind of wanted to be someone she could look up to, he just didn't really know how.

He and Grace are doing kind of ok these days, as well. They've stayed pretty neutral since Christmas; she kissed him on New Years, a whisper against his lips as they stood on the balcony borrowing fireworks displays and resolutely not making resolutions. On Valentine's day they sat on opposite sides of the sofa from one another and watched The Goonies, and he had a good time just hanging out with her and making her laugh. He thinks she had a pretty good time as well.

She squeezed his hand as she headed to her room for the night, and it felt different somehow than the way it used to. There was less longing in the touch, it felt lighter, better. He thinks they're doing ok.

They're in the kitchen one morning making breakfast, Jessie isn't awake yet and he's working the early shift at the restaurant, so he's up early. They're talking and joking around as they move about each other, bowl from the cupboard by the window, cereal box underneath, milk from the fridge, spoon from the drawer on the other side of the oven. He makes a joke and she smiles at him maybe a fraction longer than is strictly necessary, but it's nice, just being around her and not feeling like his stomach's gonna bottom out.

She's putting her lunch things in her bag and finishing her tea when Jessie pads out from Grace's room in her pyjamas, rubbing at her eyes and looking like she's about twelve years old. She perches herself on a stool at the counter and Grace automatically starts to lay out things that Jessie can eat for breakfast.

Jessie teases her a little about being basically the same person as Lily, and he joins in the ribbing as Grace pretends to be offended and acts like she doesn't know what they're talking about, all the while filling the counter with different cereals and milk and juice and jellies and butter and pretty much all the breakfast food they own, like Jessie is both unaware of where to find it, and incapable of getting it herself.

At some point Grace stands back from the counter and places her hands on her hips, cocking her head to one side and shaking it in disbelief in an impression of her mother that is simultaneously perfect and insanely goofy. She bursts into giggles and collapses against the counter, Jessie's laughing too, head thrown back and chortling around a mouthful of dry cereal she has plucked straight from the packet.

He's chuckling to himself as he watches them laugh, and it's just like they're all teenagers again, hanging around in the kitchen of that house that he had hated but he now kind of misses for all it's clutter and memories and things that made it a proper home.

In that moment he's just overwhelmed with affection; for both of them, his two sisters, for Zoe, who he's never really known, for his parents and for Lily, for Jake and Tiffany, for everyone. He feels like a complete sap, but it doesn't stop him from brushing a hand across Grace's shoulder as she heads out for class, or from picking Jessie up and dumping her on the couch before tickling her half to death.

He thinks he's finally starting to understand what family is supposed to be about.

A few times when the three of them are just hanging out, he'll glance over and see Jessie looking at him like she used to sometimes, when he was being an idiot and she knew it and she wanted to tell him but didn't think he'd listen.

So one afternoon when Grace is at class and they're sitting on the floor in front of the couch with a box of cereal between them watching cartoons, he bumps his shoulder into hers and catches her eye for a minute. He raises one eyebrow in a move that took him like, eight hours perfect, and waits for her to say whatever has been on her mind.

"What's with you and Grace?" She asks finally, hesitantly. The rip in her jeans is suddenly very interesting, and he understands why. The last time they had this conversation it _really_ didn't go well. But they've both changed a lot since then, and there's actually something going on this time, so he just breathes deep, breathes out, and tells her the truth.

"It's difficult to explain."

She makes a face like he's full of shit, and he laughs. He really loves her. He never thought about it much before, when they were younger, and he hasn't seen her properly in a couple of years, but he's faced with her now and she's just this really cool, whole person who knows him well and calls him on his shit, and he's really proud of who she is. So he basically loves her, his little sister.

"Well, are you, like, together?" She asks him, and he remembers they were supposed to be talking about Grace. Her face is serious, but open, he's glad he's not going to have to start a fight with her over this.

"No." He tells her, measuring out the syllable a little too long, so she'll know that there's more to it, as if she didn't already.

"But?" She bobs her head up and down a few times, positive reinforcement. Like getting kids to sound out words when they're learning to read. He'd find it funny that she thinks he's kind of an idiot, if he hadn't always given her reason to think it.

"We've..." He sucks in a breath, because he's not so sure he wants to say the words, tell his little sister what he's sure she knows he's done, confess his sins and make them real. But they already are real, he knows, so he just bites the bullet and does it. "We've been together."

"Oh." She's quiet for a long time. Longer than he'd like. And he can't look at her.

"Do you want to be with her?" She asks at length, in a quiet voice, and he's not sure she's sure she wants to know the answer.

He sighs and kicks his legs out, leaning further back against the sofa and pulling her down beside him into a one-armed hug.

"I don't know." He finally admits. And it's the truth. But he knows that sooner or later it's just not gonna be good enough. It seems like it's enough for Jessie though, because she just snuggles down into him and grabs another handful of Cheerios, laughing at the tv like they weren't even having the conversation.

He kind of really loves his little sister.


End file.
